ik on Letters
The Situation in Singapore Abdul Raltim Karin, The Split Society Lord Booshby, Donald McDonald Below the Bread Line F. O' Hanlon Conventional Disquiet Christopher Booker, R. Griffin Squashed Professor Oswald Doughty
Poems and Images Geofirey Grigson National Extension College David Grugeon
South African Political Prisoners S. Abdul THE SITUATION IN SINGAPORE
SIR,—May I thank the Spectator and Mr. George Edinger for publishing extracts of a letter on the recent political situation in Singapore (Spectator, November 29). Since that letter was written the following events have occurred, which certainly merit the attention of the BritiLlt public, because Britain is fully committed to support the Govern- ment which took the following actions.
I. The Singapore Association of Trade Unions, to which thirty-one national trade unions are affiliated, thus representing the majority of the island's workers, has been banned. The president, secretary-general and most of the executive committee members are detained without trial under shocking conditions.
2. Five rural dwellers' associations have been banned.
3. Three elected members of the Legislative Assembly have been arrested and detained without trial; two are in hiding somewhere in the island.
4. Further arrests have taken place at Nanyang University; the multi-millionaire chairman of the Nanyang University Council has been deprived of his citizenship for his opposition to 'Malaysia,' and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Singapore, Dr. B. R. Sreenivasan, has been forced to resign from his post because of government pressure amounting to a gross violation of the University's academic liberties.
5. The 10,000-strong Singapore Naval Base Workers' general strike, after entering its fourth week, was declared 'illegal' and thus forcibly broken up.
The British press has kept itself rather silent on most of these facts and the Spectator would be doing its readers a great service by exposing them. After all, the success or failure of the 'Malaysia' plan is of vital concern to Britain.
190a Finchley Road, NW3
ABDUL RAIIIM KARIM
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